Tuesday, September 30, 2014

I really admire completely bonkers punk jazz/noise like No Babies. To sound so chaotic and disjointed in a very composed and deliberate way like borders on impossible. The jerky spastic flailing of this entire record when really examined closely can't possibly be arranged or even written down but how the hell else are they even able to play together? Unless this is improvised? Either way the construction is insane. Like that guy on the edge of town welding junk together into a massive teetering pile of stuffed animals and car doors, it's awesome but beyond dangerous.

A-Side's "X Plus X" hit those Deerhoof, Erase Errata, and Black Dice buttons with huge sax skronks, which immediately signal intelligent stuff for super smart people. Jasmine is yelling in this free jazz mess which slows down to a snare falling down the stairs. Everything is in this crazy back and forth sound, just swaying back and forth, really fast with extremely unsettling John Zorn style harsh experimental sound "YOU KNOW ME BETTER THAN I KNOW MYSELF". "Conference of the shark" X-Ray Specs horns and kick lining up in a weird way. Who can even follow this Hella, Zack Hill style blastcore, but Jasmine is guiding it together following the seizure phrasing of the drums and sax. Robotic talking and screeching takes the place of melody like they're reexamining what they were supposed to be doing in the first place. "Your Lies" gets into a slow dirge beat, the horns just rising out of the distance. The way they come in just of key here, as of it's impossible to tune together or they just flat out refuse to make this conform. This has the most incoherence pushing your boundaries. Before you know it they're blasting in more strange machine beats under screaming up the scales. It's composed of a thousand little fills and the fact she invented something as compelling as the mathy blastcore is really something.
B-Side's "One size fits all": all of this is so against pop melody or structure like Z's or Child Abuse. A solid part eventually lands directly on the pieces with some sense of structure I recognize but its like a slow running chainsaw trying to get through sheet metal or thin aluminum cans all lined up, sparks flying as it catches and then gets stuck on an edge and you floor it only to have it escape out of control. This perfect emulated form of chaos takes weeks.
"In the great west" has a nice break beat and crazy scraping guitar. There's ways these would work separately but together they briefly meet playing with the ways that instruments can rhythmically fall in and out of sync ignoring notes and melody almost alltogether. More punk like the Pens or Foot Village- challenging as hell and its exciting. Chopped up Marnie Stern and put together by the Coathangers. Unpredictable and bizarre. Those are hard things to manufacture unless you really are breaking some new ground. She matches the sax sound and harmonizes with it is a moment of genius, really shocking and unexpected. Is there any universe where these guys are out there playing any of this live?

The End

If you're pressing 7" vinyl - you aren't in it for the money. I appreciate it.
*********************************
WE ARE NO LONGER ACCEPTING SUBMISSIONS AT THIS TIME
**********************************
Check out the friends links for other safe places for scared singles.